Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic transmission of media content and, more particularly, to electronic submission of media content for purposes of media purchase or distribution.
Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, music and movies has been purchased at music stores or video stores, or at music or video departments of larger stores. A consumer will visit the music or video store (or music or video) department and manually browse for music or movies, or similar media content of interest, on albums or compact discs (CDs) or digital video discs (DVDs) or high definition video discs. After the consumer selects the media content of interest, the consumer proceeds to a check-out register to pay for the music or movies being purchased.
In recent years, media delivery or distribution over the Internet has become popular. Today, various online media hosting sites permit virtual visitors to purchase and download albums or songs via the Internet (e.g., World Wide Web). However, in order for music or movies to be offered for purchase and download, the electronic content for the music or movies must first be provided to the media hosting sites.
Conventionally, a music label or movie studio desirous of selling their productions online produce a tape or disc, and then physically mail the tape or disc to a representative for the media hosting site. More recently, music labels and movie studios have electronically transmitted their productions to the media hosting site, via the Internet. While the Internet may provide many conveniences, such as sending e-mails with file attachments, conventional e-mails with attachments of very large files may be inefficient, may be ineffective, or may fail in transmitting the very large files.
Unfortunately, very large files are typically associated with the productions of music labels and movie studios. For example: data may total approximately seven hundred megabytes for a very large file (or collection of files) associated with an eighty minute music album; data may total approximately eight gigabytes for a very large file (or collection of files) associated with a DVD resolution feature length film, or a large collection of music videos or concert performances. Furthermore, a file or collection of files associated with high definition video can be even larger. For example, feature length movies encoded in ProRes 422 (HQ) may be as large as approximately six-hundred gigabytes or more. Accordingly, it should be understood that attendant difficulties may be encountered by music studios or movie studios when they attempt to electronically transmitted such very large files of their productions to the media hosting site, via the Internet.
Various different network transport methods may help to overcome such difficulties. Naturally, transport speed and efficiency are always at issue, in choosing suitable transport methods, since the media content files are so large. However, choice of transport methods is greatly complicated by additional competing, cross-cutting concerns such as security, cost, load balancing, reliability, convenience, ease of use, and current availability.
For example, while a studio's network firewalls may provide them with added network security, depending on how such firewalls are configured, the fastest transport methods may or may not be available currently, for use in transporting large (voluminous) digital media content. Eliminating diversity by forcing attempts using only the fastest transport methods, when such transport methods are not currently available, may result in media submission failure. As another example, while eliminating diversity by forcing use of only a “lowest common denominator” transport method may help with availability and ease of use, such transport method may provide only very poor transport speed and performance.
From the foregoing, it should be understood that such failure in media content submission or very poor transport speed may cause significant frustration and dissatisfaction on the part of content providers, such as the music or movie studios. Thus, there is a need for improved approaches to manage submission of media to an online media hosting site, where such cross-cutting concerns in transporting voluminous digital media content can be balanced.